Locky’s NHL First Period Model, 3/2: Numbers Will Be Moving on Busy Saturday

Locky’s NHL First Period Model, 3/2: Numbers Will Be Moving on Busy Saturday article feature image
Credit:

James Guillory, USA Today Sports.

Good morning!

Yesterday was pretty uneventful, as most games either produced no edge at all over the course of the day, or produced a very small one. The two edges we had vs. openers went 1-1.

It was about as bland an evening as you can have.

Today several of the "old favorites" are back, as Tampa Bay is an astonishing -400 or better in the market against Ottawa (guessing a lot of people think they can go over 1.5 in the first period by themselves) and Dallas, the frequent "under" team, is playing St. Louis.

Those will likely be prices that you see a LOT of movement on, as everyone is infatuated with the opposite ends of the first-period total trends and as we've already learned from yesterday's post, it doesn't take a lot to move these numbers.

Another game to keep an eye on is Columbus-Edmonton, which had one of the largest edges vs. the openers. Columbus has been one of the more high-scoring first period teams this year, and they actually allow more of their goals by percentage in the first period than Chicago does (the Blackhawks obviously allow more TOTAL goals in the first).

Edmonton is an aggressive, high-scoring first period team also (especially with Connor McDavid back from suspension) so this is one I'd expect to see movement on towards my numbers as well.

A Reminder

If you’re new here, I built a model to handicap first-period over/unders in the NHL.

To provide the greatest value to you the bettor, each of these articles will include a downloadable Excel file at the bottom. In it, you can insert the line at your sportsbook of choice and see the bets that are — and aren’t — offering value, according to my model.

Locky’s First-Period NHL Over/Unders: Full Slate Projections

Download the Excel doc to input odds from your sportsbooks. The table below is best viewed on a desktop computer.

About the Author
Ken covers college football, MLB, college basketball, NFL, soccer and more for The Action Network. He worked at ESPN for more than a decade and now spends his days firing on props and futures. He thought his alias, Locky Lockerson, was a funny parody of a tout, and now he's stuck with it.

Follow Ken Barkley @LockyLockerson on Twitter/X.

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